New Amarra 4

[Melvin]

It's been almost a year since throwing in the towel and trashing the program. Now, after seeing what Sonic Studio has been up to, I just couldn't resist. I'm a sucker for that Amarra sound so I took the plunge and upgraded from Symphony w/iRC to 4.0. Fortunately it's only $10 for us Symphony owners. (God only knows what the upgrade cost from 4.0 to Luxe will be, but that's for another thread.)

 

Well, it looks like Sonic Studio has finally delivered the modern 64-bit program we've all hoped for. It's a complete overhaul and it seems it was worth the wait. I will have to give a good listen before weighing in on the sound quality but man, nice work Sonic Studio!

[Melvin]

I'm in complete agreement with y'all about the sound quality, it's outstanding.

 

As for glitches, I've had a few. Nothing terrible and it's likely my long-in-the-tooth 2010 Mac mini with it's 4G memory (Sonic Studio recommends 8G) which I'm using for this test. The occasional glitch has happened when changing to a track with a higher bit/sample rate resulting in no sound. BTW, this is using a Bel Canto mLink USB-SPDIF converter feeding a Chord Qute EX (whose USB driver doesn't work in Sierra). Relaunching the program fixes the issue.

[Melvin]

3 hours ago, minicoupeman said:

I found the answer. Deleted Amarra and brought a Melco! 

 

Too funny!

 

When Amarra 4.0 was released I couldn't resist giving it a spin (I love the Amarra sound) but honestly, I couldn't be bothered. After a year with my Bluesound Node 2 I'm still happy I made the switch from the Apple/Amarra/A+/HQPlayer environment and can't imagine going back.

 

Enjoy your new Melco.

[Melvin]

I think what's annoyed me most about 4.0 involves a business decision Sonic Studio obviously made. Windows. Yes, there is much money to be made by building/porting their exclusive Mac software, but it seemed they chose to ignore their core clients. I spent A LOT of money on Amarra Symphony w/iRC, Amarra SQ+, and Amarra 4 Tidal all the while hoping they would work the extreme bugginess out of their products. I love the Amarra sound and truly hoped after such a long time coming 4.0 would be stable and modern. Instead, we get the usual crashes and library issues AND we find out after all the promises of refinement and stability, they were doing a Windows version. How about all of us who have been loyal and patient (well, not so much)? Windows? Please don't misunderstand me, I have no issue with Sonic doing business as they see fit and hope they have continued success. This just smells rotten to me.

 

[Melvin]

11 minutes ago, 6rs said:

Now I am confused. I have a Mac and Amarra 4 runs ok without Parallels or other Windows-emulating software? 

 

It's now cross-platform. Instead of just fixing their previous Mac-only software they rebuilt it and it's still a buggy mess. Perhaps if they simply stuck with the Mac platform and perfected that first ... oh, never mind. Futile. 

 

Sorry guys, I don't want to rain on anyone's parade. I won't post anymore negativity. Enjoy the good sound. 

[Melvin]

For clarity, flac files need not be compressed since dBpoweramp add "uncompressed" to their software. (Not to be confused with "0 (zero) compression".) In essence it's WAV with metadata. My own library is uncompressed flac.

[Melvin]

53 minutes ago, quark said:

Hi,

does anyone know how to setup Amarra SQ+ with Audirvana?

can you use it as a plugin?

or?

want to use irc with SQ and Audirvana

 

Yes, but first and foremost I've only done this with A+ 2.6.8. Second, I've always had to launch sQ+ first and set output device, then A+. Once A+ is launched go to your prefs and select "SonicStream" from the "Preferred Audio Device" options and uncheck "Exclusive access mode" if checked. Play music. Here's a screenshot:

 

[Melvin]

BTW, I forgot to mention I use iRC with this also. Sounds quite good.

 

[Melvin]

35 minutes ago, quark said:

I was hoping to use it as a plug-in in the audio units section of Audirvana Preferences, but I didn't get my hopes up as I knew deep down it probably wouldn't. 

 

I probably should have mentioned exploring the possibility of using sQ+ as a plug-in a while back and found it to be a no-go. This is a simple work-around for A+ and JRMC (not sure about other players). It's not nearly as elegant as a plug-in would be. 

[Melvin]

1 hour ago, MarkoF said:

My wish for a future Amarra product, while we are revisiting the itunes integration route, would be to separate the Amarra sound engine entirely and present it  as a kind of "virtual sound card" in which the output of any music app, such as iTunes or the Qobuz app, could be captured and directed through the engine and controlled at a basic level, such as a system preference for example. 

 

I love the Amarra sound, which for me is the best on my mac, but the database, memory handling and aspects of the interface leave a lot to be desired, so much so that I have remained at version 3.

 

Just wishful thinking and opinion - I guess it's that time of the year -  but I would be very interested in this kind of product.

 

Mark.

 

Isn't this what they did with sQ+ already? IIRC Sonic Studio claims the sound quality isn't quite as good as their other products. I would love to see them develop it further.

[Melvin]

Typical Sonic Studio ... too little, too late. They offer hope but rarely deliver. No doubt many have jumped shipped for one of their competitors. I spent quite a bit of money on their software over the years and spent much of that time frustrated and disappointed. Never again.

[Melvin]

Hey guys .. it's been a while. For various reasons I decided to revisit Amarra (and A+) and downloaded the latest version of Amarra 4. After some time with the app, which I found very stable, I decided to upgrade to Luxe. As a former user of Symphony 3.0 w/iRC the upgrade cost was minimal, thankfully. For now, I'm running it on my 2010 Mac mini (4GB RAM) with High Sierra. I haven't used the iRC component yet but I downloaded 1.2.4, which I understand should work. I'll get to measuring at some point.

 

Oh, that sweet seductive sound! I had a great time last night listening to a variety of music which all played flawlessly. Mark Knopfler's "Tracker" was sublime .. best I've ever heard .. rich, dense, full-bodied .. just gorgeous.

 

After years of frustration with various iterations of the software I must admit to being impressed. I abandoned the software 2 years ago and thought I would never look back, but here I am. Of course, it's not perfect but it's working great for me so far. The remote app could use a little work .. it's a bit slow but works fine. Tidal integration and sound quality seems excellent (I've only streamed a few albums so far). Suffice it to say I'm pretty happy right now.

[Melvin]

I remembered reading something about "browser mode" a while back and thought I'd give it a spin. Well, as y'all reported, it sounds great. I'm just a bit perplexed .. anyone care to explain this rather odd mode or share a link to an explanation? I'm curious to know why Sonic Studio developed it. Meaning, they completely overhauled their software with version 4 so why add a component like this? It most certainly works very well and I love it for Tidal in particular .. just curious is all. 

[Melvin]

Thanks @DancingSea. I searched online for an answer but got nothing. Perhaps Support will offer some insight at some point. 

[Melvin]

Thank you @copy_of_a .. this helps a great deal. It certainly sounds fantastic and seems more robust than the stand-alone app. So far, so good.

[Melvin]

16 hours ago, Amarra_Support said:

Time to jump in here, been very busy, a couple of things to pass along.

 

- We have new versions of Amarra 4/Amarra 4 Luxe for both Mac and WIndows that we are very close to releasing to the public.  There may be a few more fixes, but you're welcome to test it out from the links below:

 

Mac: https://downloads.sonicstudio.com/Amarra4Luxe/Amarra_4_Installer.4.2.427.zip

Windows: https://downloads.sonicstudio.com/Amarra4Luxe/Amarra_Setup_4.2.427.exe

 

- DSD via DoP is still being worked on, very sorry for the delays but we've had to shift some priorities around a little bit and had to focus on some critical issues.

 

- Using Browser Mode - the reason for Browser mode is to offload Amarra from many activities.  The Amarra app is still responsible for playback, however in the background the browser can do our library management and other activites.  It's an effort to provide better performance and sound.

 

- The EQ is not going away.  The quality of the EQ is not in question, most of the best mastering houses around the world have been using Sonic Studio Mastering EQ for many years.  We trust folks like Universal Studios, Warner Music Group, Other Shoe Productions (Neil Young), Abbey Road Studios and so many others to determine what's really needed in a world-class EQ.  The EQ in Amarra is a lite version of SSMEQ.  We've tried to make the EQ relatively easy to use with a minimum of choices for things like Dithering.  The majority of folks don't understand what Dithering is and why they would use it.  For those that need additional EQ features such as choice of Dithering, we would recommend using Amarra sQ+ as an Audio Enhancer you can apply to any audio stream.

 

- Amarra Play available on your iOS app store is a great partner to Amarra Luxe.  It's free on the App store and when used with Amarra Luxe can stream your Luxe library to your mobile device (no DSD streaming).  You can also download tracks from your Amarra Luxe library to your mobile device for offline use.  In addition, when using stand-alone, you'll have access to your iTunes library on your mobile device and have your music up-sampled and overall improvement of quality.   We'd recommend everyone give it a try, it's very cool. 

 

- When using iTunes mode, we have had reports of iTunes crashing randomly.  We are aware of this and are working to isolate what the cause may be.  If you run into this and have a repeatable recipe, please pass is along.

 

- If you're having issues with artwork in Amarra, it may be that the artwork is not attached to the file you are importing.  A fairly simple method of adding artwork to your music can be found at: https://app.teamsupport.com/?TicketNumber=22043

It uses kid3, a free audio tagger and has the ability to go out and search several sites for artwork and attache them to your music.  Save when done and then re-scan.  You should get much better results.

 

That's all for now, happy Saturday!

Ralph

 

Thanks for the update and clarification Ralph. Although I'm pretty happy with the current release, I look forward to the next.

[Melvin]

9 hours ago, church_mouse said:

From what I am now reading, is it correct that A4 is actually best relying upon i-Tunes again (so Flac is out) and also by using browser mode (how does browser mode work with using the App on an iPad)?

 

I really like browser mode and am now using it exclusively. The Amarra remote on iPad works with browser mode as well. Of course, it seems to take forever to populate artists/albums/songs but I simply tap an artist, for example, go back to the previous screen, and voila .. the albums for the artist populates promptly. A bit of a kludge but it works quickly. BTW, I've been using Amarra's library function lately without issue. YMMV.

[Melvin]

Update landed today .. 4.2.427-184. 

[Melvin]

On 6/22/2018 at 7:28 PM, DancingSea said:

I’ve yet to be able to stomach A+ despite buying far too many plugins and adjusting every setting imaginable. 

 

I'm surprised Tube Saturator Vintage didn't help. I use it to great effect with A+ for those times when I want it to sound more like Amarra. 

[Melvin]

Hey guys .. thought I'd share a bit. In the past 2 years my audio system has all but completely changed and I'm now firmly in the low-watt single-ended triode camp. I love the sound quality but couldn't help but wonder if my old Mac mini running Amarra would be a significant enough uptick in sound quality over my streamer (Bluesound Node 2) to bother with Amarra again.

 

With the mini in place I fired up the latest Amarra Luxe, added my smallish library (flac on MiniPro SSD Thunderbolt direct connection), and configured the settings. The library was added without issue. I selected a familiar album, pressed play, and was quite stunned with the difference I heard. I listened to several albums .. much of the same .. gorgeous sound quality.

 

Next I connected the remote, which seemed to work ok (better than the last time I tried it) until I tried to play an album with a different bit depth/sample rate than the previous album. Crash. Force Quit. Resart Mac. Tried again and again. A touch disheartening to say the least but I realized after some time it was the change of bit depth/sample rate while using the remote which caused the crash. I've yet to experience a crash using the program directly regardless of what I play. BTW, I don't up-sample, use DSD, or playlists. Obviously, Sonic Studio still has some work to do but I'm happy to say Luxe is quite stable and usable for my style of listening, which is album-oriented 99% of the time. YMMV.

 

The Mac mini has found a home in my system once again.

[Melvin]

After a brief time with the Mac mini back in my system (Amarra was working fine for me), I just couldn't stand it and decided (again) to move in a different direction. The mini is now performing server duty and running Asset UPnP with mconnect for control. I'm happy to say the least and don't see myself going back to having a traditional computer in the rack.

[Melvin]

17 hours ago, church_mouse said:

My solution, though this may seem a bit combersome, has been to use SQ+ as the sound device.  My experience has been that to get this to be pretty solid, one has to upsample everything to the same rate because SQ+ does not handle well sample rate changes.

 

I use either Audirvana, now on v3.5, (when I am controlling using my ipad), or JRiver/BubbleUPnPServer controlled by the Bubble Android app on my Android tablet.  In both A+ and JRMC, I use SOX upsampling to the max rate my firewire output can handle (192).

 

A+ and JRMC are set to output to the Sonic device which then feeds my Mytek.

 

I don't experience crashes, but SQ+ does not allow me to save this as the default set up, so if my MacMini has to reboot then I do have to go back in to SQ+ just to reset the sound output device.

 

I like the sound this gives me which, at the end of the day, is what is important to me.

 

When I was using a Mac mini for my audio pleasure I used sQ+ in the same manner quite often. If I ever go back to a Mac I will certainly use it again .. I'm a fan. It indeed brings the Sonic Studio house sound to any audio stream. Being a product of Sonic Studio it has some idiosyncrasies, of course, but I found it to be quite stable for the most part.

 

@DancingSea .. if memory serves I also tried sQ+ with HQPlayer (along with JRMC and Audirvana) to good effect. BTW, I'm basically in the same camp as you regarding Roon. It's a great product but a bit too pricey for my needs/wants. As to being back in the Amarra world .. best of luck and good listening.